Alright, fair warning, this will be a bit random and LONG. I’ve just been too tired to type anything up properly. Also, death in the family (we all knew this was coming, she was nearly 100 years old), so I had a couple days of driving five hours a day. This is in General because it encompasses everyone; CWs, managers, corporate, you name it. Also, there is a TL;DR at the bottom, because… Yeah.
New Store Manager. *sigh*
I want to like her. I really do. She’s upbeat (mostly), with lots of energy. I’m not good at nicknames, but I’m arbitrarily giving her the name of Hilde because that name sounds… Viking? She’s over 6 foot tall and blonde, but built more like an athlete than a model. I felt good about her for about a day. Then she started making me sad. She focused on small details, while ignoring big picture issues. For example, she got on us because sometimes we don’t put our aprons (with our name tags) on in the morning, before the store is open. Why? Because she says that we have to have our name tags on AT ALL TIMES, even if the store is closed. There are so many bigger problems. She will often just work on fabric while the store is crazy busy. I understand that SMs aren’t supposed to get tied down on a register, but she is just calmly in an aisle while we’re all running around like crazy. More than once she’s just leaned against the cutting counter to imput remnants while the line was super long.
She came out and said that she wants to be a district manager, and I have never met a DM who I liked. While on the floor, in front of customers, I asked if she wanted me to do a certain Best Practice procedure that we’ve done for a long time. She made an off the cuff remark that implied that I was silly for even asking, no we don’t need to do that, duh! Obviously I added the “duh” but it was there in her tone.
She isn’t super considerate that we actually LIKED our previous manager, and has said that she was brought in to fix the store. Maybe that’s true, but Scary (the previous SM) did not break the store, she was fixing it until corporate treated her so badly that she found a better job. Now Hilde is making big sweeping changes and acting like our procedures are all strange and bad. Some of the things that she’s changed, she claimed are because they are audit issues, and I know for a fact that she is incorrect. How do I know? Because I’ve been present for multiple audits, and the auditor has gone over these specific things and we have never lost points. The auditor has even said that for that part of the audit she was “very happy.” So we were not doing it wrong.
Still, she’s not as mean as New Manager was. She’s almost… Crap. She’s almost worse because she puts on a friendly front. At least NM just crapped on everyone and didn’t bother to sugar coat it. But again, I’m trying to give Hilde a chance. She will be gone for several months to do a store remodel in the Mid-West. Maybe when she gets back I won’t feel the same way. *hoping!*
Abandon Ship!
Meanwhile the store is hobbling sadly along again without an SM. The ASM is actively job hunting, and is very stressed out. She has to essentially be the SM, but isn't being paid for it. Another manager is just so airheaded that she’s driving me crazy. I really like her, but she’s only a year or two from retiring, and she’s just not on the same level as she used to be. We’re having to rely on a closing part-time key holder who is very young (in college) and she pretty much just puts in the time while not actually making the closers do any work. She’s been talked to before about things like not sitting on the cutting counter while the store is still open. She’s nice, but she’s more like a friend than a manager.
Everyone is talking crap about everyone else. Pages go unanswered unless a person calls many, many times. My CWs have started walking in the store, clocking in, going to the break room to “put away their stuff” and it is about 10-15 minutes before they get to the sales floor to do their job. The store is full of boxes, since we’re getting holiday shipments now. Our DM has sent emails saying that we have to get all the Halloween stock on the floor before we touch our basic items. (normally basics take precedence over seasonal) So if you walk into the store and want a certain glue in the basic craft aisle and the shelf is empty, it’s probably because all the stockers have been putting out pre-made tutus and velvet pumpkins. This is the same DM who made our store cut two shifts during the busiest part of the Labor Day sale. Somehow our store is doing amazingly well for sales, yet we're still overspent on our labor? Bull.
My cat could run the store better.
About half of our handheld scanners are broken. Some just refuse to connect, and one got its screen rather spectacularly shattered. For about a week three of our nine registers would not work. Not that it matters, since we only have one or two cashiers at a time. Oh, so a huge amount of merchandise is now on locking pegs (because THAT’S always a sign that a company is doing well, right?) and we have a shortage of keys for these pegs. Not only that, but there are not one, not two, but three different locks! One takes a regular key, one key is magnetic, and another key is for the cages. They tried to keep a set on a hook behind the cutting counter, so that cutters could at least help a bit, but this lasted less than one day before the keys got lost. For about two weeks we ran out of white register tape. We had to use yellow cutting slip tape. We also ran out of paper bags, so we had no bags except smaller paper bags which we still have to charge five cents for, which pissed people off because we didn't have any big bags, and the little ones aren't free.
TL;DR: Our store has had four SMs in three years, I’m not optimistic about the new SM, we are being prevented from getting out our stock of basic craft items because our DM is a controlling idiot, almost nothing in the store actually works, including (haha) a large number of employees due to the lack of any coherent leadership. Oh, we can't even get bags or register tape ordered properly.
New Store Manager. *sigh*
I want to like her. I really do. She’s upbeat (mostly), with lots of energy. I’m not good at nicknames, but I’m arbitrarily giving her the name of Hilde because that name sounds… Viking? She’s over 6 foot tall and blonde, but built more like an athlete than a model. I felt good about her for about a day. Then she started making me sad. She focused on small details, while ignoring big picture issues. For example, she got on us because sometimes we don’t put our aprons (with our name tags) on in the morning, before the store is open. Why? Because she says that we have to have our name tags on AT ALL TIMES, even if the store is closed. There are so many bigger problems. She will often just work on fabric while the store is crazy busy. I understand that SMs aren’t supposed to get tied down on a register, but she is just calmly in an aisle while we’re all running around like crazy. More than once she’s just leaned against the cutting counter to imput remnants while the line was super long.
She came out and said that she wants to be a district manager, and I have never met a DM who I liked. While on the floor, in front of customers, I asked if she wanted me to do a certain Best Practice procedure that we’ve done for a long time. She made an off the cuff remark that implied that I was silly for even asking, no we don’t need to do that, duh! Obviously I added the “duh” but it was there in her tone.
She isn’t super considerate that we actually LIKED our previous manager, and has said that she was brought in to fix the store. Maybe that’s true, but Scary (the previous SM) did not break the store, she was fixing it until corporate treated her so badly that she found a better job. Now Hilde is making big sweeping changes and acting like our procedures are all strange and bad. Some of the things that she’s changed, she claimed are because they are audit issues, and I know for a fact that she is incorrect. How do I know? Because I’ve been present for multiple audits, and the auditor has gone over these specific things and we have never lost points. The auditor has even said that for that part of the audit she was “very happy.” So we were not doing it wrong.
Still, she’s not as mean as New Manager was. She’s almost… Crap. She’s almost worse because she puts on a friendly front. At least NM just crapped on everyone and didn’t bother to sugar coat it. But again, I’m trying to give Hilde a chance. She will be gone for several months to do a store remodel in the Mid-West. Maybe when she gets back I won’t feel the same way. *hoping!*
Abandon Ship!
Meanwhile the store is hobbling sadly along again without an SM. The ASM is actively job hunting, and is very stressed out. She has to essentially be the SM, but isn't being paid for it. Another manager is just so airheaded that she’s driving me crazy. I really like her, but she’s only a year or two from retiring, and she’s just not on the same level as she used to be. We’re having to rely on a closing part-time key holder who is very young (in college) and she pretty much just puts in the time while not actually making the closers do any work. She’s been talked to before about things like not sitting on the cutting counter while the store is still open. She’s nice, but she’s more like a friend than a manager.
Everyone is talking crap about everyone else. Pages go unanswered unless a person calls many, many times. My CWs have started walking in the store, clocking in, going to the break room to “put away their stuff” and it is about 10-15 minutes before they get to the sales floor to do their job. The store is full of boxes, since we’re getting holiday shipments now. Our DM has sent emails saying that we have to get all the Halloween stock on the floor before we touch our basic items. (normally basics take precedence over seasonal) So if you walk into the store and want a certain glue in the basic craft aisle and the shelf is empty, it’s probably because all the stockers have been putting out pre-made tutus and velvet pumpkins. This is the same DM who made our store cut two shifts during the busiest part of the Labor Day sale. Somehow our store is doing amazingly well for sales, yet we're still overspent on our labor? Bull.
My cat could run the store better.
About half of our handheld scanners are broken. Some just refuse to connect, and one got its screen rather spectacularly shattered. For about a week three of our nine registers would not work. Not that it matters, since we only have one or two cashiers at a time. Oh, so a huge amount of merchandise is now on locking pegs (because THAT’S always a sign that a company is doing well, right?) and we have a shortage of keys for these pegs. Not only that, but there are not one, not two, but three different locks! One takes a regular key, one key is magnetic, and another key is for the cages. They tried to keep a set on a hook behind the cutting counter, so that cutters could at least help a bit, but this lasted less than one day before the keys got lost. For about two weeks we ran out of white register tape. We had to use yellow cutting slip tape. We also ran out of paper bags, so we had no bags except smaller paper bags which we still have to charge five cents for, which pissed people off because we didn't have any big bags, and the little ones aren't free.
TL;DR: Our store has had four SMs in three years, I’m not optimistic about the new SM, we are being prevented from getting out our stock of basic craft items because our DM is a controlling idiot, almost nothing in the store actually works, including (haha) a large number of employees due to the lack of any coherent leadership. Oh, we can't even get bags or register tape ordered properly.
Comment